


waiting patient for the sun to rise.

by commonemergency



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Anxiety, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, long hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 08:34:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18117158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/commonemergency/pseuds/commonemergency
Summary: It takes Dan a second to process what he’s doing but then he closes his eyes and lets himself be held. He wraps his arms around him and places himself in the crook of Phil’s neck like that’s where he belongs. Dan feels so cold against Phil’s body.or Dan needs a hug.





	waiting patient for the sun to rise.

**Author's Note:**

> i believe i said in my last fic that my next story would be my pbb. this is not it, but that is still coming. sorry. i just needed to write about dan and phil needing a hug because _i_ needed a hug. 
> 
> i also just realised this is my 100th story. thanks for reading. <333
> 
> title is from 'slip away' by mumford & sons i highly recommend it bc it gives the tone for this fic.

**i.**

It’s late, or early, depending on how you look at it, and they’re on Skype again. They seem to always be on Skype, or they’re texting, or calling each other while they wait out their long commute. Some days it feels like a lifeline, just something to keep each other tethered to the world while their head gets lost in the clouds. They always come back to each other, but sometimes, it’s easy to just stay there in a headspace that’s far too cloudy for the other to join, it can feel almost like drowning. 

Dan is having a hard day. 

Except, he’s really been having a hard week. It’s like dominos, once something bad happens everything falls down with it and he feels like he can’t catch a break or really breathe. It’s hard to breathe. He bites down on his bottom lip now as he scrolls aimlessly through his social medias while Phil has music on in the background. They’ve gotten into the habit of just being on Skype with each other but not really saying anything. 

Dan _wants_ to say something. He wants to say a lot of things, but it feels like something is caught in his throat each time he tries, and he kind of feels like crying because of how desperate he wants to feel _any_ kind of feeling. He’ll take any sort of affection or a listening ear from anyone at this point, but he wants to talk to Phil. It’s just he feels like he can’t. Or he won’t. He doesn’t know why that is—doesn’t understand why he can’t trust his feelings around someone who says they care about him so much or why he doesn’t believe it.

It’s just that Dan has never been good at being vulnerable. 

“Dan?” Phil says on the other side of the screen. They’re normally silent for long periods at a time but never this long, so hearing Phil’s voice immediately snaps him out of his train of thought. 

He raises an eyebrow at him, feeling like just looking at Phil is taking so much energy out of him. But god, he’s beautiful, and for some reason, he likes him and Dan doesn’t even know why. 

“Yeah?” He clears his throat, pushing down the feeling again. 

“Are you…” Phil bites down on his bottom lip for a second, looking down before taking a small breath and looking back up, “Are you okay?” 

Dan smiles, it’s not a happy one, but he smiles at the way that somehow, from miles away, Phil can read him better than anyone else can, and sometimes better than Dan can. 

“I don’t know. I just.” He stops, feeling all the tension that he’s felt throughout the day slowly start to seep out of his body and into his words. 

“Today was hard,” he says with a shrug. He feels the weight pushing against the corner of his eyes and feels liquid start to fall down his cheek. 

“I don’t know—” He sniffs, wiping his face with his long sleeve. “It’s just the kind of hard day that doesn’t make sense? And all I want…” he sighs, “All I want is like... A really long hug.” 

Dan looks at Phil who’s got a concerned face.

“I just really want a long hug from you, Phil.” 

Phil frowns, he sees him reaching out to the screen and Dan does the same, pressing it against the side like he’ll somehow feel him. 

“I can’t wait to give you that long hug, Dan.” 

**ii.**

Sometimes Dan goes so far Phil isn’t sure if he’ll ever come back. 

(He does.)

But sometimes, he leaves for so long and comes back so late it’s hard to stay up. It irritates Phil that he can’t understand Dan’s mind the way that he wants to. He can’t wrestle the mean thoughts in his head because they’re not his to fight. 

All he can do sometimes is handle Dan with care like so many people have failed to do. It’s just when it’s midnight, and the temperature is low outside and Dan’s phone is sitting on the table it’s hard to keep calm and to handle with care when you feel like a tornado in a china shop destroying everything you can touch because you can’t help it. 

Phil’s anxiety is bad, he’s been trying to watch television but nothing interesting is on and he can’t watch shows without Dan, and nothing feels right, not even the shirt he’s wearing feels good against his skin because it feels prickly from how anxious he feels and his skin feels like it's crawling. His hands are shaking and sometimes he wishes that he could just call his mum because he needs a hug and for her to pet his hair and tell him that it’ll be okay. 

Because it’s not hard to love Dan, in fact, Phil finds it to be as easy as breathing. It’s just hard because Dan doesn’t know how fully love himself so he pushes Phil away and he can’t blame him for it. 

He can’t really blame him for everything, even when he sometimes wants to, it’s just this is a lot of work sometimes.

He takes a deep breath, and when he slowly lets it out he hears the door unlock. 

Phil jumps up from his seat and he freezes waiting for Dan to walk into the lounge. 

His cheeks are red, and his hair is starting to curl a little bit at the ends, his jacket is wet from the rain. He looks cold. Phil takes another deep breath and walks over to Dan and helps him peel his jacket off because he looks out of it. 

“Sorry.” Dan whispers, like if he were to say it any louder it would pop whatever was already starting to threaten to spill over. 

Phil is still learning to understand, and he feels like he messes up a lot and says the wrong thing because he doesn’t fully get it, but he wants to be better, and he wants Dan to realise how much it scares him when he leaves, and it’s hard finding a middle ground and navigating how to work through all of this, but Phil pushes all of that aside opening his arms up for Dan. 

It takes Dan a second to process what he’s doing but then he closes his eyes and lets himself be held. He wraps his arms around him and places himself in the crook of Phil’s neck like that’s where he belongs. Dan feels so cold against Phil’s body. 

They’re both shaking. 

“Sorry.” Dan says again, even quieter, pressing cold, chapped lips against Phil’s neck. 

“It’s okay.” Phil says, his hands trying to smooth over every invisible wrinkle. It doesn’t right every wrong, doesn’t fix the broken parts, but they’ll get to that later. Things that are broken can be fixed again and if they can’t then something new can be made and it’s not a bad thing. 

“It’s not,” Dan whispers, he feels him take a big breath, releasing all the unspoken things he wants to say with it. 

“It’s okay.” Phil holds on to him tighter. 

He can’t remember the last time they hugged this long but it made some kind of barrier break in Phil because he feels a prickle of a tear in the corner of his eye. He needed this. 

One day, eventually, they’ll talk about everything that keeps them up at night. 

One day, eventually, they’ll talk about all the things that scare them and make them worry. 

One day, eventually, this won’t be as hard as it and they’ll look back thinking of how grateful they were to go through this when they did, and in some way, they do, but right now— 

Right now was for this single feeling of being held and being wanted when sometimes feeling like you don’t deserve it. 

Phil isn’t sure how long they stand there for, but in his head, the room starts to dim, and the noise starts to fade away, and all there is just them. 

**iii.**

_It’s a rare sunny day,_ is Dan’s first thought when he steps out of the therapy building. It’s sunny, but it’s deceptive. It’s meant to rain later today which he finds incredibly fitting but also incredibly predictable. He wishes sometimes London would actually surprise him and let the sun stay out for just a little while longer. 

It’s a habit to look around him, to see if he spots anyone who might know him. He shakes his head putting a hat over his head and sticking headphones in. He wants to get lost in the world, even if it’s his own kind of safety precaution. 

Despite it being a therapy day Dan feels like he can breathe, venting his feelings to someone who’s completely unbiased felt like coming up for fresh air after days of drowning. It doesn’t always feel like this after therapy but he was having a good day. 

It was the kind of good day that came after a hard week of being in bed and shutting the world and everyone that inhabited it out. He expressed how he felt like it was some false hope, in therapy, and that somehow something would set it off and ruin it, but he was learning not to think like that and just enjoy the moment as it came. 

(He was never really good at it, but he was trying his best.)

Dan gets his phone out of his pocket and texts Phil that he’s on his way home and if he needs him to pick up anything while he’s out. 

_Yeah_  
_Can u get me hair dye plz_

Dan shakes his head and rolls his eyes but there’s a smile tugging at his lips. 

_lmao ok_

He sends a thumbs up emoji with it. 

His commute is fine, he can easily get lost in his own head while still being completely aware of his own surroundings, it’s a talent that he’s learned over the years and very rarely does he get stopped. He thinks it’s because he purposely tries to make himself smaller and invisible, something he is also working on with his therapist. 

When he gets to Boots he finds the hair dye and then looks through the snack aisle. He grabs a packet of gum and then a chocolate bar. 

By the time Dan steps out of Boots it’s starting to rain and Dan wants to flip the middle finger to sky. 

_i’m about to come home looking like a drowned rat_

Dan sends Phil a picture of himself with the hair dye in his face. 

_Omg i love you_  
_Youre a cute rat_

Dan does send Phil just a picture of his middle finger then. 

When he gets home it’s to a house that smells like takeout and he can hear their comfort show playing on the tv (an episode they’ve already seen), and Dan feels grateful and a little emotional. He takes his jacket off and shakes out his hair and walks to the kitchen where Phil is plating everything. 

“I was going to attempt to cook you dinner, but I figured since you had therapy I wouldn’t subject you to that. We all win today.” Phil says piling on a large quantity of chow mein onto Dan’s plate. 

Dan watches Phil give him extra broccoli because he knows he likes it while taking out some of the mushrooms because he knows that Dan isn’t a fan of it. 

Dan feels a burst of warmth in his chest, it sometimes feels so overwhelming he doesn’t know where to put all that love and emotion, like it feels too big for his body. 

“I love you.” Dan says, his voice low and soft. 

Phil smiles, he doesn’t look up from plating the rest of Dan’s food. 

“I bet you say that to all the guys.” Phil jokes, and Dan knows that he’s joking because sometimes it was easier than showing their feelings but they were getting better at that. 

“No.” Dan says, getting closer handing Phil the chocolate bar. “Just to you.” 

Phil finally looks up at Dan and sees the chocolate bar in his hands and he smiles. 

Dan opens his arms for Phil and it doesn’t take even a second for Phil to circle his arms around him. 

Eventually, one day, is today and sometimes a single hug can make all the difference.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos appreciated!
> 
> talk to me on tumblr/twitter: **@nihilismdan**
> 
> [reblog](http://nihilismdan.tumblr.com/post/183466376843/waiting-patient-for-the-sun-to-rise-pairing) on tumblr.


End file.
